Trend in video at print media

As we discuss in our recently-released Vocus State of the Media Report, the merging of digital venues and mediums continues. Video, for example, continues to be a tool that media organizations are increasingly utilizing on their websites.

Recent reports noted The New York Times is separating its videos into topic channels. The Times will soon make them available on the paper’s website, apps, connected TVs and other mobile devices, reported BeetTV. Meanwhile, other plans include allowing marketers to reach their audience through video as well as in print. A part of this will be a “branded playlist,” New York Times video general manager Rebecca Howard told BeetTV. “Let’s say it’s a KitchenAid—we could put that on our food section, we can make content for them. It would be mixed in with everything else that we offer.”

In partnership with DreamWorks Animation’s AwesomenessTV division, Seventeen magazine will debut original shows on its YouTube channel. The shows will feature five YouTube personalities who will cover topics such as boys, beauty, entertainment and fashion, reported Variety.com. AwesomenessTV will also be providing a platform for teenage girls to produce their own channels.

Time Inc. has recently made headlines for its recent staff cuts, which reportedly number into the hundreds. But the company has also been planning a relaunch of Time.com slated to debut later this month. Like The New York Times, the magazine plans to incorporate more video into its site so that it can utilize it for advertising, reported NYPost.com.

Meanwhile, as previously reported by inVocus, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today all recently streamed the president’s State of the Union address.

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, recently commented on an interview between BeetTV and Washington Post video general manager Steven Schiffman on The Post’s video strategy. Within the interview, however, Schiffman noted the significance of scale, saying even 10 to 20 million video views a month does not give publishers what they need to do to “create the type of content in the ecosystem.” According to Benton, Schiffman went onto say that to boost the effectiveness of video initiatives, premium publishers should enter into video sharing consortiums.

Benton broke it down: “In other words, imagine if the Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Inc., and other top publishers decided to create a new unified, separate brand for all the high-quality video they produce. Videos could appear under that separate umbrella—what Hulu was for the networks whose content fed it—and they could also appear on publishers’ individual websites. So a great Times video could appear on WashingtonPost.com and vice versa.”

Benton went on to note how the news organizations could then syndicate the package to smaller news sites, creating a larger scale of viewership.

It won’t be surprising if Schiffman and Benton’s ideas for video sharing come to pass, given how partnerships between industry outlets continue to be a part of the new world of media as business models shift, change and merge.